صحراء أغافاي عند الغروب

You leave Marrakech in the late afternoon and the city stops abruptly. Within half an hour the ground turns to pale grey hammada, ridged and treeless, with the Atlas rising behind it. Agafay is not sand. It is stone desert, and it holds color differently.

A camel, or a short walk out along the ridge, fills the hour before the sun drops. Then dinner on a terrace held for your party: harira, lamb from the clay oven, mint tea poured from height. Musicians play at a distance rather than at your table.

Once the light goes the temperature falls quickly and the sky opens. Bring a jacket. The drive back is forty-five minutes, short enough to put the whole thing at the end of a day already spent elsewhere.